RCA  Research  2008  Biotechnology  City  My City = My Body  project   

Urban Biogeography is the study of the distribution of urban biodiversity over space and time. One of the techniques often used by Urban Biogeographers is "sewage monitoring". This tool allows the Urban Biogeographer to pump up a tiny amount of sewage into the little bottles and scan it for different pharmaceutical and chemical traces, all without even having to lift a manhole cover.

Using synthetic biology*, bacteria are programmed to change colour when detecting oestrogen, anti-biotics, viagra or prozac. Since synthetic biology is both open source and modular, this tool can be redesigned to detect other chemicals by any Urban Biogeography enthusiast, both professional and amateur.
Many thanks to James Chappell and Vincent Rouilly at Imperial college for the bioengineering and introducing me to the wonderful world of Synthetic Biology.

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*Synthetic biology is the coming together of biology and engineering, resulting in tools and technologies to design and build biological systems. The blueprints show how to access a database of standard biological parts and get down to DNA code in 3 mouseclicks, in this case of an antibiotics detector for Urban Biogeography. This code can be sent of to be synthesized (printed on a DNA synthesizer) and then be implemented into a bacteria so it will change colour when it detects anti-biotics. Download the blueprints in pdf format. (560KB zip archive)
Urban Biogeography at the RCA show